Obscuring the specific unit information is like fighting games not being forthcoming with frame data. Someone is going to figure it out anyway and create a full library, if your game doesn't die first. Just put it in your game.
@@suakeli lol, people like you wouldn't even know what that is so even if they have frame data listed somewhere, trust me you're not going to even find out let alone see it.
@@suakeli Frame data is a part of every fighting game. It's just putting into numbers how fast a move comes out, how long the attack is active for, how long before your character recovers from doing the move and who gets to act first if your opponent blocks it. You don't have to care about it if you don't want to, but it's really nothing to be worried about. It's just giving you information about your character's moves in concrete numbers.
@@liamfoote7164 Fighting games are silly mindless button-mashing for me, like Mario Party or Jackbox party games. As soon as someone starts taking them too seriously, I'm out. If you want real strategic depth, why not just play a turn-based game? To give an example, if I'm in an elevator and hear mindless low-effort elevator music, I don't care about octaves and melody compositions. I save them for genres that I respect. (Also I am very bad at making fast decisions so I suck at any game that doesn't give me at least 10 seconds to decide every move. So I might be a bit biased.)
The whole time when Day[9] was confused about how enriched Thorium works is a perfect example of why convoluted gameplay mechanics NEED in-game tutorials. We take for granted just how much information the dedicated playerbase gets from watching supplemental videos, either community guides or even official dev-released information. If it isn't within the game client, and ideally playable, then a large portion of the playerbase just won't know how it works.
Always amazes me how Sean can stay spoiler free for so long. He must have really not watched anything in the past few months... it's his favorite genre too pretty much.
oh, but they have winter VODS !! They are for sure adequate! Even though they literally are linked from the client to youtube and outdate the Celestials.
Day9 has done a huge service to Frost Giant by providing this feedback. I hope they go over this video slowly and reflect on how to fix what's missing.
Honestly, kind of an unbelievable oversight to have literally nothing on Therium in-game. Don't think there's anything in game that even calls the physical object you see Therium.
It's crazy how much Consumer Testing & QA you provided for this game (for free!). Really appreciate your approach to cover the perspective of both "Brand New Players" and "Seasoned RTS Vets" and where these games either succeed or fall short. Really incredible depth. Thank you for the insight because I want this game to be good. Starcraft 1 was the first game I purchased (with my dad at a now abandoned Staples in 1999!) and truly nothing has hit quite the same (Your campaign replays have been what I have fallen asleep to all week!)
I think enrichment of the... thereu... vespene gas exists mainly to discourage you from immediately rushing for higher-tech units. At the start of the game, you just can't access it as fast, encouraging you to focus on lower-tier buildings and units. This mechanic makes a lot more sense if the "enriched nodes only make enriched nuggets" thing is a bug. Because then it wouldn't discourage you from mining gas, only slow down gas mining after the initial surge - which inversely encourages you to seek out unexploited bases to get as many surges of gas as you can. I like this idea.
Within the first 20 minutes already perfectly illustrating the biggest issue I had with Stormgate. The 'easy build' controls (combined with limited hotkey modifications) are just a barrier for people coming from games like Starcraft, which is their exact target audience. Sean might have the patience to spend 6 hours learning their system, but personally I just reinstalled SC2 instead.
Honestly I think people that don't get or like StarCraft just won't play any RTS. They try to pander to casuals but the casuals are playing Fortnite. Is Lady Gaga in this game? Eminem? Can you build a blue house and teabag people and do little Tik Tok dances? Then I guess people will just keep playing Fortnite 😂🎉 And all of these stuff to help new players actually just annoy the old RTS players, which is the real audience. Like the copy everything from looks and mechanics from other RTS es (mostly SC2), make it feel as generic and forgetable as possible, but then wanna make it unique in the way that annoys the people that could want to play this game, it's nuts nuts
Btw they don't care much about audience as well because I didn't get a key to try this game. I bet you didn't as well, specially if you are from a random country that isn't the US or Europe. All they did was give SC pros and their little clique alpha keys, collect feedback from extremely biased people and then expect the game to be any good. Like now tell your little friends to pay for this generic messy generic looking ass game because I surely won't
@@Zibit21 It took one of the most storied RTS players in the world an hour to understand the mechanics with hundreds of people helping explain it. Maybe it doesn't need "fixing" but it definitely needs to be explained better in the UI/UX.
Basically this. Even though it's F2P, I don't even feel like going through the effort of downloading and installing it, given the reviews I've seen. The game's not done, but the developers are probably in a catch 22 where they don't have enough funds to finish the game. So they release an unfinished game in the hopes of monetizing it enough so that they can finish it on the fly. I get the move, I wish I could support it, but I don't. I really hope that this turns into a great, gun game and just an honest ALTERNATIVE to SC2.... nothing to say about being it's "spiritual successor" or what not.
I honestly don't see a point playing it EVER to be honest. OK so the idea is that they combined 2 games, WC3 and SC2. and made something in the middle. I guess, perhaps there could be a niche. If they polish everything etc etc etc, I can see how you can make it somewhat playable ( with tons of changes, which they haven't yet implemented), BUT... I don't see a reason Why I would be downgrading from a SC2 gameplay to something which is inferior to it. As I'm not really a multiplayer WC3 guy( enjoyed the campaign though, to some degree), but I do like SC2 gameplay more... And I guess some people like WC3 gameplay more... Why would they be switching to something in the middle... I really don't get it. And the worst part about it, is that it has NO LORE. Which is a huge part in RPG and RTS. If they had combined and united the lore of SC2 and WC3 it would have been at least viable to consider it for me... But making something completely new... With no attachments to the lore that was developed for over 20 years... I just don't get it... I guess the core audience that I see for it, is the newcomers, new gen of players, which hadn't experienced WC3 or SC2 before, and just want to try something fresh... So they could be building towards that... But it takes so much work to be honest that I don't think it would be possible for them to go for long term community building world and experience... Honestly, with that money, they should have just bought out the IP. And made a proper balance. Released and released a new campaign with relaunching SC2. It would have been a much larger success and it had much more potential, in my personal opinion. ( I am not a fun of the current balance of SC2 and I haven't played it for a long time to be honest, but I still enjoy it's gameplay and I continue watching it's games).
Frost Giant needs to watch this episode ASAP! Some of the things that Shawn is pointing out should 100% be changed. The logic just doesn't make sense to the gamer.
Completely agree, why does the new "easy to learn" control scheme not work with units you've selected? I get the priority is idle > nearest but why couldn't it just have included selected > idle > nearest? or hell make it even better selected idle > selected nearest > idle > nearest
Bit confused on their easy build system. Why can't it be "If you have a worker selected, QS builds the structure with that worker. Else idle worker, else closest worker." That way, I don't think you'd even need the second "Z to build with selected worker" command confusing things as it can always just be the same "Q" button to build. Q then just behaves in a context sensitive way depending on if you have a worker selected or not. To me this seems easier to learn as you only have one same command to build something, and solves the issue Day9 points out towards the start. Unless I'm missing some reason why this wouldn't work.
I will say, initially that is how celestials essentially worked. No z button on anything. The problem I personal experienced and it was the #1 piece of feedback by far in the initial playtest was: people loading into a game, see no build button on any of their units or buildings, and being extremely confused about how to do anything at all. Once someone explained "just press q at any time" then it was pretty intuitive but the first time experience was really really bad.
It's a cool suggestion, I'd like to have it as a toggleable option for intermediate/advanced player. It does introduce the issue of having two very different things happen from the same input, though (building with multiple selected workers vs choosing a single worker + building + going back). I could see it becoming annoying that you have to actively unselect workers whenever you're going to build somewhere from Q (specially when you're going through multiple bases, and building in both), so you might as well use Z for everything and save yourself the hassle. Or running into issues where some workers go back to what they were doing, and others becoming idle.
This concept you've described would not be congruent with the other races, and how the QWERT buttons function for the game as a whole. It is unintuitive at first, but it does work in the grand scheme of things. If you want your brain to really hurt, try the new Celestial race.
You know what.... Your whole intro on the quick build mechanic is spot on. I am having the same messy experience. I think I'm done with it because it will hurt all my other RTS muscle memory. Also that's crazy that it grabs an idle worker from a mile away with quick build... Edit: This game REALLY messes with my SC muscle memory when I go back and forth. I don't like that... Edit2: This game has power building so the only way to split up builders and have them all return is to use the quick build. You need to use both quick build and regular to play this game at full potential. Conclusion: You are right, it makes the skill ceiling higher and the mental stack is rough at first. On the same note a noob who doesn't care about optimization can just use quick build and never think about selecting workers ever.
I would have a system for selecting and moving the unbuilt structure. This seems like a simple solve to check for move waypoints near where the structure is built I guess, For me mentally I don’t see the issue because if I select a worker to build it’s a different process than the global build system. This was never an issue for me. The quick menus give huge flexibility imo
@@davidbodor1762his issue is actually moving the blue print of changing if altogether. TBH it’s overblown there’s clearly a difference between the global commands and command card commands for individual units. I don’t know why this bugs him but having the system check for the nearest Bob move command waypoint.
An idea, workers don't build buildings anymore. There is a swarm of drones hovering over the cc that build the buildings. You don't need to select them to build something. Just Z+S+click on the map. Drones can be shot down to prevent the building from being built or reduce building capacity for some time.
It's very amusing how Commands and Conquer did pretty much this way back when in the red alert series, just without the "smart commands". Allies just click in the menu, the building is pre made offscreen and then you click where the building goes and it goes there magically, but they only ever can build one at a time. Soviets get to build cranes, and you can build one building per crane you have, but buildings build live on the ground and are vulnerable. Meanwhile the Empire of the Rising Sun just builds Nanotech-Origami cars that drive to a Location and unfold into a building.
they really need to change the smart build heuristic to always prioritise the closest worker, rather than choosing idle workers first. the fact that it will choose an idle worker from your main base to build a turret halfway across the map at your 6th base rather than one of the workers at your 6th base is absolutely idiotic. idle workers should only be prioritized over closer workers if the difference in distance between them is tiny, like less than half a screen
Eh there's another issue with that tho. Say if I move a worker to be ready to expand at my natural, then I also want to build a barracks at my base entrance. If the worker running to my natural expansion is used instead to build the barracks that would also be annoying
@@WhopperCheeseDota if i send a worker down my ramp to my natural and then issue a global command for a barracks to be built at my ramp I feel like the worker that is heading to the natural is absolutely the worker i would expect to build the barracks. that seems like the most intuitive and understandable situation and if its not what i intended to do I feel like my reaction would be "oh im an idiot, of course it used the closest worker. I should have issued an individual command" rather than the reaction that is more common with how it works right now which is: "what the fuck?!!??! thats not what I meant to do! this global command feature is so fucking annoying!!!"
@@ninetailedfox579121 if i want to panic build a turret in my main's mineral line because i saw a drop incoming i dont want the worker i just gave a move command to move from my 5th base to get ready to build my 6th base to be the one that actually accepts the build order. proximity should take far higher priority than idleness, even if you count moving workers as "idle"
@@ninetailedfox579121 Could mess you up if you scout with a worker and it considers that worker first because it's "idle" over a nearby worker on resources. I'd go for selected workers taking priority over idle and nearby.
All of the questions day9 brought up should have been answered at some time in the campaign. Shoehorn in awkward missions if you have to, but explain the mechanics to players!
maybe they are not ready to commit to fleshing out a tutorial when the game is so incomplete still and will change? it must be difficult or time consuming to build a good tutorial given that so many games have such terrible tutorials. ive never understood it and to me a bad or non existent tutorial is often the first indicator that the game will not be good.
The campaign is intensely boring in this game. I played 2 missions and was bored out of my mind, so I just tried to play co-op to get raged at by some turkish guy.
Personally I think that’s the wrong way to do it. RTS campaigns are often so radically different to the multilayer that multilayer really needs its own tutorial.
Editing buddy bot, turning off everything it does, Then enabling it will have it control your workers. It doesn't do it super well but it gets rid of idle workers.
You could currently build with "sq" over "q" to stop the move action first, but then it might not be the closest worker and it's still unreliable. Selected worker(s) > idle > nearby just seems like the best solution.
Yeah and his other problem could be fixed by simply judging 'If idle worker more than x units further away, use non idle worker'. Probably anywhere on the main base platform should just be using a worker form the main base.
It's good when developers add easier ways to perform complex things while still providing advanced players with the ability to do the higher reward higher difficulty option... but there is a big issue when the newbie way teaches you bad habits or trains you in a way where learning more advanced options is now opaque or more difficult. It needs to give you the ability to know there is more for you to learn. If it approaches the ease by presenting it as the ideal better version then it is a problem. The reason is that you expect the easy method to be a stepping stone to the next method... but usually developers make systems where you have to completely learn the harder one from scratch instead of just improving your existing player knowledge and habits. Q priority should probably be: 1) Selected workers 2) Nearest idle or collecting worker (no preference) If you hold shift it should prioritize: 1) Dividing evenly selected workers among work queue 2) Selected nearest idle or collecting worker (no preference) one each among the work queue If you hold ctrl it should prioritize: 1) Selected workers performing work queue in order one at a time instead of dividing evenly 2) Same as shift for nearest idle or collecting worker (no preference) This would satisfy more contextual circumstances that you would want to build. They can still keep the Z key for build and requiring selected units. It in this case is a context key showing you what your unit can do, where the Q key works regardless of selection. Then the functionality remains clear, where selecting units gives you more control but it isn't forcibly locked behind completely different keys.
The reasoning I see behind the enrichment mechanic is to allow strategies that are light in therium to better transition into a lategame with heavy therium costs without having to mine on prediction so you *might* have enough for the lategame. Instead you just slap five Bobs onto a glowing field and suddenly have all the therium you need.
Omg thank you day 9 for putting into words that which I couldn't sent the first 20 mins of this to a few of my buddies trying to get me in but I am having so much confusion with workers building and just the game doing what I want it too
I wonder if the build issue he was having issues with at the start would be fixed if the game would first look for the worker that he has selected, then an idle one and lastly the closest one.
You’ll never solve it completely, but yes that kind of polish will help. Day9’s point here is that the player still has to learn the system before playing.
@@TheChivs688 What if the worker is on one side of the map, and you see another base is being attacked. So if you Q-Z to make a new turret, the worker from the other base will come over because it is selected.
@@TheChivs688 One downside would be if you happen to have a random idle worker at the other side of the map that you forgot about. Then the building would not be built by the closest one as you might expect, but the idle worker would take ages to walk across the map to build that building.
The game purposely makes it not optimal. They are an accessibility tool. To encourage you to optimize by selecting the optimal worker. It creates macro difference, so better players can optimize
A worker on a move command isn't idle, if you think about it. That move command can be for any number of things e.g. scouting. I'd hate to have a scouting worker get pulled into building something and then accidentally not scout.
I uninstalled when the tool tips were pointless, I was trying to figure out what anything did got quickly overwhelmed and noticed it was gonna take actual hours to read everything, opted to uninstall. Will try again when its out of early access, but this is just way too early I think
It's not gonna get there. I think their decisions and priorities are evidence of their competence and decision-making. I don't think it's magically going to become better than SC2
I've been following since the first early access preview back in February 23. So far each build has brought massive changes to the game based on playtester feedback. I expect they will continue this trend 📈
Hot damn some people in your chat.... Anyway you were right about everything with the quick build vs manual build. It is the biggest request in the discord atm.
An easy way to fix this would be a gameplay settings option where you can choose how to prioritize which worker builds the thing (for example "closest worker" or "closest idle worker"). It's a really hard problem to solve because you're trying to make something work both for beginners and very advanced RTS players who want to do very specific things (build this turret right here right now for this drop that's coming in).
I ditched smart build keys for totally different reason. Simply because that they occupy too many valuable keys😂 For example, I use core layout in sc2. I put all my bases and upgrade buildings in control group Q, and all my productions in W, which to me feels more convenient. I also want to ditch grid layout. Though it's easier to learn, but hardly is optimal. Say I want to set "build workers" to space, and "build exo", "cast xxx spell" also to space. Because they're most frequently used, right? It's currenrly impossible coz they're in different grids and stormgate only supports grid layout. I also want to set "steal and add to group" to ctrl. But stormgate doesn't even have "steal and add". More so, the modifier keys are hard coded, eg. you can only change ctrl+1 to ctrl+a but not shift+1. I hope stormgate will become more customizable in the future.
Funny enough, all the issues you're seeing with Smart Build seem like features from what the devs have talked about. Smart Building is purposefully worse than normal building because you're supposed to leave the training wheels behind (like autocombos in fighting games), and just have it as a convenient option for late-game busywork (like building supply), when the differences no longer matter. Love your approach to examining every minute detail to from every angle, though. Edit: the Therium exploration section is fucking amazing, thank you. Shit ain't that deep, tho. I do like it as an opportunity cost to tech rushing on 1 or 2 bases, it's a good reason to engaging with Tier 1 units (besides staying alive).
Even if this is the case, it's really stupid that the training wheels are training you to do something completely different than the "intended way of playing the game". There are other ways to add accessibility options, and trying to hamstring people who use the global hotkeys is just kind of stupid given how much time investment is required to learn them. If you know anything about learning something through repetition, It can be difficult to unlearn a bad habit. In this case, they've deliberately designed the game to have a bunch of "bad habits" which are suboptimal that you have to unlearn after you take off the training wheels. In other words, if you want to be competitive in this game you are almost expected to have previous experience playing another strategy game so that you will avoid the training wheels entirely. That makes zero sense...
IMO this is a really bad way of doing it. Making the system beginners use and the system pros use completely different means you have to completely relearn the game if you want to improve at it. Why would you make a slightly easier, slightly worse way of playing that players will have to completely unlearn if they want to improve at the game? Not to mention playing that way actively makes your play worse without you noticing; ie, idling workers, grabbing the wrong worker, making you unable to power build. If someone learns to play using only the quick build stuff, they might never learn they can power build or quickly defend by grabbing a worker from a specific location.
@@draakisback The "the time required to learn the control scheme" has been 5-10 minutes, judging by the RTS-newbie friends I played with. It's as simple as Q to build a building, and then W/E to build units. It's a learning tool if you're new to RTS, so you keep doing what you're already doing otherwise. If you ever want to optimize your build timings, you can learn the traditional way of selecting the workers, but by then you'll have learned other, more important RTS things, and the training wheels did their job. And the other 4 macro keys are still useful, they're the same as hotkeying your buildings in SC2.
I kind of hate how the more attack "speed" you have, the slower you attack. Don't get me wrong, I like that there's a number that shows how many seconds it takes between attacks, but it should definitely be called attack "cooldown" or similar
Attack "rate" is ambiguous, but generic and suitable and not misleading, and since it's such a short name I would prefer it for simple UI layout reasons
I love that just by reading the stats on the units you figured out so quickly that vanguard mirrors must just end up as dog meta every game 😂 cuz they do
the "easy" controls and the qwertz system also drives me up the wall well, coming from sc2 - that system feels way more natural and intuitive than this "smart" system
What do you mean by "that system"? SG has the SC2 system + the quick menu. So it's not a case of which system is better, because you can already select and hotkey anything in SG. The quick build system is good for fast building stuff rapidly when you don't care which worker does it as they return to collection automatically afterwards. Like quick supply structures or turrets.
@@Leonhart_93 well, sure you can choose whichever system you like in sc2 and make your own. in sc2 it just feels like you have way more control and precision. stormgate is so wishy-washy simplistic yet infuriating. it lacks focus and a clear vision what it even wants to be. a hybrid of sc2, wc3 and some others, yet is nothing all at the same time. don't know how else to describe it really
@@LounoirRecords How does it feel like you have way more control and precision in SC2 if SG has EXACTLY the same system of hotkeying multiple structure and camera hotkeys? The quick build system is completely extra on top of all of that. And also getting upgrades from the quick build without hunting for upgrade structures in your base is genius. Besides, factions like Celestials have exclusively advantages from the build system, no downsides. They build things like in the C&C games.
Good analysis. I don't particularly have an opinion about the quick build system, but it's useful for upgrades without hunting for the structures. And the nuisance only applies to Vanguard, it's not an issue for the others. What I like most is the upgrades system, it's well thought out without copying Starcraft.
Smart build should take from selected workers first if you have any selected. That way you can choose an individual worker or a group of workers to do the task if you want to control that and you can use Q across the board instead of a mix of Q and Z.
Supposedly the global hotkeys being bad and vague is a feature of this game and this makes zero sense to me. When you practice something through repetition, it can be very difficult to unlearn bad habits. They designed this game with a bunch of "training wheels" which are effectively a worse control scheme, any new player who uses these controls is going to have to unlearn them if they want to get to the highest level of play. In other words they've added some arbitrary difficulty to the game which will lock people out from being able to play it properly unless they have previous experience with a game like starcraft 2 or Warcraft 3. That's terrible design. For a game that supposedly is trying to be as new player friendly as possible while still keeping a high skill ceiling, this system is just completely antithetical of what they claim they want this game to be. They are basically penalizing the new players by giving them a worse control system and I can't figure out the reason why anybody would design a game like this. There are other ways to do accessibility, it makes no sense to design two separate control systems and have one of them be objectively worse.
Solution to the quickbuild issue is to prefix all build hotkeys when selecting a worker, with S for stop. By stopping, it will then be nearest worker (probably).
I'm in a similar boat Day9. It feels like I need to spend hours learning everything all over again just to understand the game. I never understood the "barriers of entry" of RTS games until Stormgate. I don't have the time to study for Stormgate before I get to play it anymore.
@@JustinK0I see your point, but at the same time it's not unreasonable for legacy players, who are already familiar with established genre conventions, to want new games to be somewhat close to their comfort zone. Demanding players relearn stuff normalized by comparable games is a dicey business- too many boutique mechanics will alienate the player, who often has limited time and patience.
@@CF565 I don't feel like Stormgate requires you to learn anything that new though? It plays like a mix of Starcraft and Warcraft in one game feels very natural to me
@@RancorSnp There are a ton of effects like "Infest" mentioned in tool tips but they don't actually explain what they do at all lol. The little Fiends that spawn are so tiny I didn't even notice I was making them at first to put two and two together.
I don't see what you have to relearn? The smart build system takes a few minutes to understand, and if it feels bad to you you can just use normal hotkeys instead. Everything else is pretty standard for RTS games (a lot of things are so close to SC/WC that it can feel like a knock off lol)
I think if a moving worker is both pathing to a position closer to the queued smart command than any idle worker, and is closer than any idle worker, that moving worker should be interpreted as an idle worker for the smart command.
The whole problem with thereum is that they copy/pasted the resource mechanics from Tempest Rising without adding any real gameplay or lore purpose, they only wanted to have an innovative resource mechanic. In that game the resource is some kind of radioactive plants. It makes sense that it keeps spreading because it's growing. It makes sence that it gets "enriched" because it is a freaking forwer, that can bloom. In Stormgate - thats just some rocks. I'm also pretty sure that the node getting "enriched" and it only spawning enriched nuggets is a bug.
For the quick build or quick train, maybe it would be good to show the buildings selected in the central screen and when you train the units you see the build queue pop up like normal. Like a visual confirmation that your build has occurred. Rather than just leaving that screen black with no information
Thank you for making this video. I just started playing Stormgate yesterday, and I was very confused by the automatic stuff and the Buddy Bot thing, etc.
I totally agree on the "intention" point. The perfect strategy game would be me having an intention and the game executing it perfectly. That intention might be stupid, but at least I wouldn't be held back by not being able to click things fast enough. This is not it. And even if it was it for me, someone else would have different expectations. So it would need to be customizable in some way.
They just need to make ADVANCED hotkeys . Where you can choose your own key for each unit. So when you will use them you will no longer have these QWERT buttons and also you will have your own keys which is much better for high lvl players.
this Therium resource is the greatest case of overengineering I have ever seen. the vespene geyser didn't need 3 layers of stuff and useless visuals stacked on it. I'd love to have a conversation with the designer responsible for this.
AI War 2 uses a similar interface for building things, except with a lot of differences. For example, when you queue up a structure, it just automatically starts building-- you don't need a worker to help. Workers will actually automatically move to help build it. This is kind of okay, because workers don't harvest resources-- they exist solely to assist with building things. You can override this manually if you want. You can't just jam the interface into a game that works a lot like starcraft and expect it to just automatically work. You need to adapt the other systems surrounding it. (opinion of someone who has watched like 10 minutes so far)
oh also I think production of stuff on a planet in AI War 2 literally cannot be done by selecting the unit that builds it, you just have to do it from the Build Interface. So, that helps to prevent some conflicts in inputs. It's still a separate system you have to learn, but, it doesn't have this noise from other conflicting mechanics making it harder to learn.
There is a gameplay complexity benefit to enrichment, though I think it's unnecessary and overly complicated. If you wait long enough for nuggets to start becoming enriched, you are actually falling behind on the total amount you could have mined by that point. Enriched nuggeta are mined faster, but they do not contain more total resources, which means the exact same amount is on the map, but you hit the maximum number of nuggets already. This means you are "catching up," but you are definitively behind and your opponent, if he does not have any enriched nuggets, has mined strictly more resources than you have, which means he has a strict advantage over you. I don't think the enrichment system is necessary, I think it's overly complicated and this benefit is rather minor and unnecessary, but it at least exists.
On the quick ai stuff, I actually like this design I think. It lets weaker players enjoy a 'higher level' game, as long as they don't face 'higher level' disruption, if that makes sense. Their actions end up doing more per move, as long as the opponent doesn't intentionally mess with those systems. *but they can be messed with*, making space for more interesting harassment?
Easy fix on the selected and single build with shift and control as the switches between power and split build and just have selected override any smart function on the Q menu
The main issue with the "Smart" system is it feels like you're learning a fundamentally different style of play divorced from the traditional method, and the rhythm of how you build with it doesn't flow neatly into learning the game "proper", which is a massive issue for a system supposedly designed around easing new RTS players into the genre. It's like Stylish mode in Guilty Gear or BlazBlue. Sure, it lets you jump right into the game, but it isn't really *teaching* you anything about the game or how it's supposed to be played, and in many ways accidentally cripples your learning process.
The Brutes would make sense, if the white health was the amount of hp the brute had remaining divided by 2 or something. That way, its a choice, you either get 2 buffed fiends, or just the 2 normal fiends.
the catch back up mechanic of the enriched gas is weird because you dont have to be behind to obtain it from other nodes. expanding after a point will just be boost for either player.
Super interesting. I felt I was struggling with the controls and many times had to try to guess what would happen instead of the game doing just what I wanted it to. Hard to put in words what the problem was but Day9 is explaining some of it really nicely.
If the reason for enrichment is so they don't end up with excessively large fields of Therium (not sure I can think of another reason for it), couldn't they just make it so the nuggets spawn at half the rate, have twice the total value, and can be mined by 2 workers? Each nugget could also spawn in two stages to keep the same frequency of the value spawning (so would be a bit closer to Tiberium in C&C). So then you just have one type of Therium, and you get the enrichment benefit from just stockpiling.
It would make a LOT of sense that, if you already had workers or structures selected and then pressed the quick-build menu, the menu would preferentially use the workers/structures you had just selected.
I'm at 12 something minutes into the video... regarding the movement and quick build, I think the feedback should be counting moving workers as if they were idle in their destination when the quick build menu is trying to figure out what to use, that would make it so you can send a worker before building, and then using quick build the worker you sent there will be the one selected, this might make 90% of the not intuitive part be removed from the game, just gotta find what range from the build to the destination command will be considered, limiting the range of it would avoid sending something to the other side of the map to build in the future and it returning because was the only "idle" worker
I think someting like first check any moving workers with destination within 20 units of build, no match? then any idle workers within 20 units radius, no match again? then pull the closest resource worker within 20 units, then no match again would look for any idle workers and after that any resource workers, that I think would fix most of the unintuitive issue of this mechanic (20 units is just a random reasonable number I came up with no testing, might be more, might be less)
I believe the gameplay and mechanics are there, maybe just like visual wise a better bump in detail or more polish can help this keep growing. Hope the devs keep working at it in the upcoming year to come while in early access. Glad you enjoyed playing this Day9!
I think you're wrong on base attack time. Dota 2's engine very closely resembles warcraft 3, in which you can describe attack speed using two values: attack cooldown and attack speed bonus. attack cooldown is exactly like here - number of seconds between attacks. In dota 2 this is called base attack time. Attack speed bonus then provides a percentage bonus to reduce this. 100% attack speed bonus = attack twice as fast = 1.0 BAT goes down to 0.5 sec for actual attack cooldown.
After watching how construction works in this game I can say without hesitation that I am not thrilled about it. I'm glad early access is going to last a year because there's been so much that needs reworking.
The easy build function issuing the order to a worker from another base tells me the developers have never relied on emergency levers in Dwarf Fortress
Great stream. I fell off watching you when you kind of became a goofy Cali e-celeb, but this here was pure, prime-time gaming. So much respect for actually testing and trying to understand the mechanics. Nice job dude.
If you are ever designing a game and you end up with such a convoluted system for a foundational element of the game as is here with the nugs, you should take a step back and think hard about wtf you are even doing.
I would rather that the smart build button actually select the worker and pre-presss the build button so I could see which unit would follow the command
Please clip and post the MS paint sponsored 15 minute “How to cook Therium Nuggets using your Therium Mine” so I can stream it to others instead of figuring it for myself. 😂
Receive new information about the ressource 55:30 Tries to understand for 27mn and 12sec 1:23:32 reads the information he requires to answer his question, take 10s to process, 1:23:42 finally understand the mechanic of the ressource. Disclaimer, this is not to mock day9 in anyway, i just have empathy and compassion because sometimes you can be "blocked" or "limited" with your own logic when you try to understand a new thing. He was obviously having certain logic\experience\scheme\pattern\basis regarding how the ressources should work with the experience he has with others RTS, seeing him finally understand it gives me the giggle :3 Edit#: He understand less than what people understood about it, and the moment he understood, it felt like he understood more than what people knew because they didn't agree. Because his take on having the Node being enriched is not shown in the game and could actually be, for clarity purposes, better if there could be an animation to show that indeed the node now is enriched and is producing enriched nuggets.
Holy crap thank you, you explained perfectly my issue with the easy build system! As a game designer myself, I find that if you want to make a better system to make a more complex system more accessible, it needs to be easily communicated, faster to learn and use and so, to reduce clicks. So you're right, it's not bad, but it could do with a lot of small QOL updates to make it more intuitive and reach the goal that the UI/UX designers wanted to reach, which is to make the interface easier to use and more accessible for new players. Like, say, a better system for selecting workers from a set of available workers (a better automated triage system), a global build queue with a minimap ping that shows up when hovering over the specific unit or building in the build queue (and being able to select the building or unit on first click, then on second click, having the camera center over the building) as well as a "cancel" button on each unit or building in global build queue. Maybe you can even have it so it only shows 5-6 individual builders/buildings on the build queue that you can personally customize, not unlike the control groups. Things like that. And this is just me thinking on the fly, not even necessarily good design ideas.
Honestly, this whole video feel like a head chef reviewing his new kitchen in front of a seminar.
As a technical writer, these tooltips make me want to shake someone. My goodness.
please write a detailed explanation of the technical and physical process you would guide someone regarding how to shake them ;)
Obscuring the specific unit information is like fighting games not being forthcoming with frame data. Someone is going to figure it out anyway and create a full library, if your game doesn't die first.
Just put it in your game.
We want our game to be friendly to low skill players so we'll make it impossible to become a high skill player!
If a fighter game even mentions something like "frame data", I'm uninstalling it immediately.
@@suakeli lol, people like you wouldn't even know what that is so even if they have frame data listed somewhere, trust me you're not going to even find out let alone see it.
@@suakeli Frame data is a part of every fighting game. It's just putting into numbers how fast a move comes out, how long the attack is active for, how long before your character recovers from doing the move and who gets to act first if your opponent blocks it. You don't have to care about it if you don't want to, but it's really nothing to be worried about. It's just giving you information about your character's moves in concrete numbers.
@@liamfoote7164 Fighting games are silly mindless button-mashing for me, like Mario Party or Jackbox party games. As soon as someone starts taking them too seriously, I'm out. If you want real strategic depth, why not just play a turn-based game?
To give an example, if I'm in an elevator and hear mindless low-effort elevator music, I don't care about octaves and melody compositions. I save them for genres that I respect.
(Also I am very bad at making fast decisions so I suck at any game that doesn't give me at least 10 seconds to decide every move. So I might be a bit biased.)
The whole time when Day[9] was confused about how enriched Thorium works is a perfect example of why convoluted gameplay mechanics NEED in-game tutorials. We take for granted just how much information the dedicated playerbase gets from watching supplemental videos, either community guides or even official dev-released information. If it isn't within the game client, and ideally playable, then a large portion of the playerbase just won't know how it works.
LMAO the irony of you using "Thorium" when it's "Therium"
Imo it's only convoluted due to the glitch. Without that it's pretty easy to figure out exactly how they work through observation
45 minutes into the infernals testing - "what's infest"
My god this game really needs ANY form of tutorial.
Always amazes me how Sean can stay spoiler free for so long. He must have really not watched anything in the past few months... it's his favorite genre too pretty much.
I’ve read the infest text and I still don’t get it, I don’t get how it even fits the theme of Infernals. Maybe call it possess?
oh, but they have winter VODS !! They are for sure adequate! Even though they literally are linked from the client to youtube and outdate the Celestials.
@@craigrobbins2463 I immediately closed the tab when I saw Winter. I appreciate his continued passion for SC2 but he's not for me
@@Benn1to he was definitely a weird choice.
Day9 has done a huge service to Frost Giant by providing this feedback. I hope they go over this video slowly and reflect on how to fix what's missing.
Honestly, kind of an unbelievable oversight to have literally nothing on Therium in-game. Don't think there's anything in game that even calls the physical object you see Therium.
I couldn’t figure out how to mine it for awhile because you actually need to select a tiny area in the middle of the field.
It's crazy how much Consumer Testing & QA you provided for this game (for free!).
Really appreciate your approach to cover the perspective of both "Brand New Players" and "Seasoned RTS Vets" and where these games either succeed or fall short.
Really incredible depth. Thank you for the insight because I want this game to be good. Starcraft 1 was the first game I purchased (with my dad at a now abandoned Staples in 1999!) and truly nothing has hit quite the same (Your campaign replays have been what I have fallen asleep to all week!)
I love how Sean only had to read the dog tooltip once to instantly figure out the entire VvV meta
Laughingface.gif
You can say a lotta things about him but gotta give the man credit where it's due. He's very educated and intelligent in math/logic.
This comment just made me realize Vanguard Mirror is going to be abbreviated VvV until the end of time 😳
I think enrichment of the... thereu... vespene gas exists mainly to discourage you from immediately rushing for higher-tech units. At the start of the game, you just can't access it as fast, encouraging you to focus on lower-tier buildings and units. This mechanic makes a lot more sense if the "enriched nodes only make enriched nuggets" thing is a bug. Because then it wouldn't discourage you from mining gas, only slow down gas mining after the initial surge - which inversely encourages you to seek out unexploited bases to get as many surges of gas as you can. I like this idea.
Within the first 20 minutes already perfectly illustrating the biggest issue I had with Stormgate. The 'easy build' controls (combined with limited hotkey modifications) are just a barrier for people coming from games like Starcraft, which is their exact target audience. Sean might have the patience to spend 6 hours learning their system, but personally I just reinstalled SC2 instead.
And they want to target that audience too, it's purposeful. These decisions they made about this type of thing are just so baffling.
Why you think different and less macro is harder ?
Honestly I think people that don't get or like StarCraft just won't play any RTS. They try to pander to casuals but the casuals are playing Fortnite. Is Lady Gaga in this game? Eminem? Can you build a blue house and teabag people and do little Tik Tok dances? Then I guess people will just keep playing Fortnite 😂🎉
And all of these stuff to help new players actually just annoy the old RTS players, which is the real audience. Like the copy everything from looks and mechanics from other RTS es (mostly SC2), make it feel as generic and forgetable as possible, but then wanna make it unique in the way that annoys the people that could want to play this game, it's nuts nuts
Btw they don't care much about audience as well because I didn't get a key to try this game. I bet you didn't as well, specially if you are from a random country that isn't the US or Europe. All they did was give SC pros and their little clique alpha keys, collect feedback from extremely biased people and then expect the game to be any good. Like now tell your little friends to pay for this generic messy generic looking ass game because I surely won't
@@raven-a thats fair
Thats why they have only 1k player in the game while sc2 have more thats definition of being dead
Now this is the kind of feedback that can help them fix the system.
If anyones feedback is going to fix this games issues and make it amazing, it’s mr. Starcraft himself.
Hope the team don't get offended and actually sit and listen to what Day9 is going through here. Would really benefit the game.
Why would the system need fixing? Because Day[9] can't understand it?
@@Zibit21 Because the flaws Day9 found in how it works will be found by many, many others.
@@Zibit21 It took one of the most storied RTS players in the world an hour to understand the mechanics with hundreds of people helping explain it. Maybe it doesn't need "fixing" but it definitely needs to be explained better in the UI/UX.
18:26 Day9: "okay, another logic with this 'smart' system that's driving me insane" Bob: "wonderful :)"
So far i just don‘t see why we should play this over SC2. Even visually it‘s inferior even though SC2 is 14 years old…
Basically this. Even though it's F2P, I don't even feel like going through the effort of downloading and installing it, given the reviews I've seen.
The game's not done, but the developers are probably in a catch 22 where they don't have enough funds to finish the game. So they release an unfinished game in the hopes of monetizing it enough so that they can finish it on the fly. I get the move, I wish I could support it, but I don't.
I really hope that this turns into a great, gun game and just an honest ALTERNATIVE to SC2.... nothing to say about being it's "spiritual successor" or what not.
I honestly don't see a point playing it EVER to be honest. OK so the idea is that they combined 2 games, WC3 and SC2. and made something in the middle. I guess, perhaps there could be a niche. If they polish everything etc etc etc, I can see how you can make it somewhat playable ( with tons of changes, which they haven't yet implemented), BUT... I don't see a reason Why I would be downgrading from a SC2 gameplay to something which is inferior to it. As I'm not really a multiplayer WC3 guy( enjoyed the campaign though, to some degree), but I do like SC2 gameplay more... And I guess some people like WC3 gameplay more... Why would they be switching to something in the middle... I really don't get it. And the worst part about it, is that it has NO LORE. Which is a huge part in RPG and RTS. If they had combined and united the lore of SC2 and WC3 it would have been at least viable to consider it for me... But making something completely new... With no attachments to the lore that was developed for over 20 years... I just don't get it...
I guess the core audience that I see for it, is the newcomers, new gen of players, which hadn't experienced WC3 or SC2 before, and just want to try something fresh... So they could be building towards that... But it takes so much work to be honest that I don't think it would be possible for them to go for long term community building world and experience... Honestly, with that money, they should have just bought out the IP. And made a proper balance. Released and released a new campaign with relaunching SC2. It would have been a much larger success and it had much more potential, in my personal opinion. ( I am not a fun of the current balance of SC2 and I haven't played it for a long time to be honest, but I still enjoy it's gameplay and I continue watching it's games).
Frost Giant needs to watch this episode ASAP! Some of the things that Shawn is pointing out should 100% be changed. The logic just doesn't make sense to the gamer.
Completely agree, why does the new "easy to learn" control scheme not work with units you've selected? I get the priority is idle > nearest but why couldn't it just have included selected > idle > nearest? or hell make it even better selected idle > selected nearest > idle > nearest
Bit confused on their easy build system. Why can't it be "If you have a worker selected, QS builds the structure with that worker. Else idle worker, else closest worker."
That way, I don't think you'd even need the second "Z to build with selected worker" command confusing things as it can always just be the same "Q" button to build. Q then just behaves in a context sensitive way depending on if you have a worker selected or not.
To me this seems easier to learn as you only have one same command to build something, and solves the issue Day9 points out towards the start. Unless I'm missing some reason why this wouldn't work.
omg. i get what you mean. great idea
I will say, initially that is how celestials essentially worked. No z button on anything.
The problem I personal experienced and it was the #1 piece of feedback by far in the initial playtest was: people loading into a game, see no build button on any of their units or buildings, and being extremely confused about how to do anything at all. Once someone explained "just press q at any time" then it was pretty intuitive but the first time experience was really really bad.
It's a cool suggestion, I'd like to have it as a toggleable option for intermediate/advanced player. It does introduce the issue of having two very different things happen from the same input, though (building with multiple selected workers vs choosing a single worker + building + going back).
I could see it becoming annoying that you have to actively unselect workers whenever you're going to build somewhere from Q (specially when you're going through multiple bases, and building in both), so you might as well use Z for everything and save yourself the hassle. Or running into issues where some workers go back to what they were doing, and others becoming idle.
This concept you've described would not be congruent with the other races, and how the QWERT buttons function for the game as a whole. It is unintuitive at first, but it does work in the grand scheme of things.
If you want your brain to really hurt, try the new Celestial race.
It’s crazy to me this isn’t already implemented.
Man spends over one hour trying to understand rocks.
don't let any geologists know. They'll be so pissed with how much time they've spent
@@fallenchain I was about to comment "man I've spent most my LIFE trying to understand rocks"
And we thought grubby was thorough, damn 😂 Good job 👍🏼
You know what.... Your whole intro on the quick build mechanic is spot on. I am having the same messy experience. I think I'm done with it because it will hurt all my other RTS muscle memory.
Also that's crazy that it grabs an idle worker from a mile away with quick build...
Edit: This game REALLY messes with my SC muscle memory when I go back and forth. I don't like that...
Edit2: This game has power building so the only way to split up builders and have them all return is to use the quick build. You need to use both quick build and regular to play this game at full potential.
Conclusion: You are right, it makes the skill ceiling higher and the mental stack is rough at first. On the same note a noob who doesn't care about optimization can just use quick build and never think about selecting workers ever.
Ooooh! That’s why the wrong worker keeps doing it, I tell them to move first.
For expanding this is SUPER rough especially. Drove me crazy.
My simple fix idea would be to allow VG bobs to click on blueprints to start them early.
I would have a system for selecting and moving the unbuilt structure. This seems like a simple solve to check for move waypoints near where the structure is built I guess,
For me mentally I don’t see the issue because if I select a worker to build it’s a different process than the global build system. This was never an issue for me. The quick menus give huge flexibility imo
@@davidbodor1762his issue is actually moving the blue print of changing if altogether.
TBH it’s overblown there’s clearly a difference between the global commands and command card commands for individual units.
I don’t know why this bugs him but having the system check for the nearest Bob move command waypoint.
An idea, workers don't build buildings anymore. There is a swarm of drones hovering over the cc that build the buildings. You don't need to select them to build something. Just Z+S+click on the map. Drones can be shot down to prevent the building from being built or reduce building capacity for some time.
I find this idea really cool!
It's very amusing how Commands and Conquer did pretty much this way back when in the red alert series, just without the "smart commands".
Allies just click in the menu, the building is pre made offscreen and then you click where the building goes and it goes there magically, but they only ever can build one at a time.
Soviets get to build cranes, and you can build one building per crane you have, but buildings build live on the ground and are vulnerable.
Meanwhile the Empire of the Rising Sun just builds Nanotech-Origami cars that drive to a Location and unfold into a building.
i honestly dont think this game is going anywhere
Of course it isn't. It doesn't have legs.
What do you mean? You don't want to play a shitty version of release StarCraft 2 without all its expansions? It's even got terrain, protoss and Zerg.
@@dg5059 > It's even got terrain
I mean I hope it does.
@@LordDragox412facts
@@dg5059 star craft 1 the og version is light years better than this lmao ?
High concept pitch: What if StarCraft 2.... was _bad_?
they really need to change the smart build heuristic to always prioritise the closest worker, rather than choosing idle workers first. the fact that it will choose an idle worker from your main base to build a turret halfway across the map at your 6th base rather than one of the workers at your 6th base is absolutely idiotic.
idle workers should only be prioritized over closer workers if the difference in distance between them is tiny, like less than half a screen
Eh there's another issue with that tho. Say if I move a worker to be ready to expand at my natural, then I also want to build a barracks at my base entrance. If the worker running to my natural expansion is used instead to build the barracks that would also be annoying
Or simply make walking workers be considered idle if they are not walking to a specific task.
@@WhopperCheeseDota if i send a worker down my ramp to my natural and then issue a global command for a barracks to be built at my ramp I feel like the worker that is heading to the natural is absolutely the worker i would expect to build the barracks. that seems like the most intuitive and understandable situation and if its not what i intended to do I feel like my reaction would be "oh im an idiot, of course it used the closest worker. I should have issued an individual command" rather than the reaction that is more common with how it works right now which is: "what the fuck?!!??! thats not what I meant to do! this global command feature is so fucking annoying!!!"
@@ninetailedfox579121 if i want to panic build a turret in my main's mineral line because i saw a drop incoming i dont want the worker i just gave a move command to move from my 5th base to get ready to build my 6th base to be the one that actually accepts the build order. proximity should take far higher priority than idleness, even if you count moving workers as "idle"
@@ninetailedfox579121 Could mess you up if you scout with a worker and it considers that worker first because it's "idle" over a nearby worker on resources. I'd go for selected workers taking priority over idle and nearby.
All of the questions day9 brought up should have been answered at some time in the campaign. Shoehorn in awkward missions if you have to, but explain the mechanics to players!
But then you'd have to play the Stormgate campaign and... eugh.
maybe they are not ready to commit to fleshing out a tutorial when the game is so incomplete still and will change? it must be difficult or time consuming to build a good tutorial given that so many games have such terrible tutorials. ive never understood it and to me a bad or non existent tutorial is often the first indicator that the game will not be good.
The campaign is intensely boring in this game. I played 2 missions and was bored out of my mind, so I just tried to play co-op to get raged at by some turkish guy.
Personally I think that’s the wrong way to do it. RTS campaigns are often so radically different to the multilayer that multilayer really needs its own tutorial.
Editing buddy bot, turning off everything it does, Then enabling it will have it control your workers. It doesn't do it super well but it gets rid of idle workers.
I feel like there's such an easy fix for this just prioritizing the worker that's selected over the other conditions???
You could currently build with "sq" over "q" to stop the move action first, but then it might not be the closest worker and it's still unreliable. Selected worker(s) > idle > nearby just seems like the best solution.
Yeah and his other problem could be fixed by simply judging 'If idle worker more than x units further away, use non idle worker'. Probably anywhere on the main base platform should just be using a worker form the main base.
It's good when developers add easier ways to perform complex things while still providing advanced players with the ability to do the higher reward higher difficulty option... but there is a big issue when the newbie way teaches you bad habits or trains you in a way where learning more advanced options is now opaque or more difficult. It needs to give you the ability to know there is more for you to learn. If it approaches the ease by presenting it as the ideal better version then it is a problem. The reason is that you expect the easy method to be a stepping stone to the next method... but usually developers make systems where you have to completely learn the harder one from scratch instead of just improving your existing player knowledge and habits.
Q priority should probably be:
1) Selected workers
2) Nearest idle or collecting worker (no preference)
If you hold shift it should prioritize:
1) Dividing evenly selected workers among work queue
2) Selected nearest idle or collecting worker (no preference) one each among the work queue
If you hold ctrl it should prioritize:
1) Selected workers performing work queue in order one at a time instead of dividing evenly
2) Same as shift for nearest idle or collecting worker (no preference)
This would satisfy more contextual circumstances that you would want to build.
They can still keep the Z key for build and requiring selected units. It in this case is a context key showing you what your unit can do, where the Q key works regardless of selection. Then the functionality remains clear, where selecting units gives you more control but it isn't forcibly locked behind completely different keys.
Ooooh! That’s why the wrong worker keeps doing it, I tell them to move first.
For expanding this is SUPER rough.
The reasoning I see behind the enrichment mechanic is to allow strategies that are light in therium to better transition into a lategame with heavy therium costs without having to mine on prediction so you *might* have enough for the lategame.
Instead you just slap five Bobs onto a glowing field and suddenly have all the therium you need.
Omg thank you day 9 for putting into words that which I couldn't sent the first 20 mins of this to a few of my buddies trying to get me in but I am having so much confusion with workers building and just the game doing what I want it too
I wonder if the build issue he was having issues with at the start would be fixed if the game would first look for the worker that he has selected, then an idle one and lastly the closest one.
You’ll never solve it completely, but yes that kind of polish will help. Day9’s point here is that the player still has to learn the system before playing.
Yeah exactly, commented the same, seems the most logical way and can't see a downside. Would certainly fix some of those issues Day9 was showing.
@@TheChivs688 What if the worker is on one side of the map, and you see another base is being attacked. So if you Q-Z to make a new turret, the worker from the other base will come over because it is selected.
@@TheChivs688 One downside would be if you happen to have a random idle worker at the other side of the map that you forgot about. Then the building would not be built by the closest one as you might expect, but the idle worker would take ages to walk across the map to build that building.
The game purposely makes it not optimal. They are an accessibility tool. To encourage you to optimize by selecting the optimal worker. It creates macro difference, so better players can optimize
A worker on a move command isn't idle, if you think about it. That move command can be for any number of things e.g. scouting. I'd hate to have a scouting worker get pulled into building something and then accidentally not scout.
I uninstalled when the tool tips were pointless, I was trying to figure out what anything did got quickly overwhelmed and noticed it was gonna take actual hours to read everything, opted to uninstall.
Will try again when its out of early access, but this is just way too early I think
It's not gonna get there. I think their decisions and priorities are evidence of their competence and decision-making. I don't think it's magically going to become better than SC2
I hope they are taking the early access very literally, we've been conditioned to believe early access is close to the final game with most companies
I've been following since the first early access preview back in February 23. So far each build has brought massive changes to the game based on playtester feedback. I expect they will continue this trend 📈
Hot damn some people in your chat....
Anyway you were right about everything with the quick build vs manual build. It is the biggest request in the discord atm.
An easy way to fix this would be a gameplay settings option where you can choose how to prioritize which worker builds the thing (for example "closest worker" or "closest idle worker").
It's a really hard problem to solve because you're trying to make something work both for beginners and very advanced RTS players who want to do very specific things (build this turret right here right now for this drop that's coming in).
I ditched smart build keys for totally different reason. Simply because that they occupy too many valuable keys😂
For example, I use core layout in sc2. I put all my bases and upgrade buildings in control group Q, and all my productions in W, which to me feels more convenient.
I also want to ditch grid layout. Though it's easier to learn, but hardly is optimal. Say I want to set "build workers" to space, and "build exo", "cast xxx spell" also to space. Because they're most frequently used, right? It's currenrly impossible coz they're in different grids and stormgate only supports grid layout.
I also want to set "steal and add to group" to ctrl. But stormgate doesn't even have "steal and add". More so, the modifier keys are hard coded, eg. you can only change ctrl+1 to ctrl+a but not shift+1.
I hope stormgate will become more customizable in the future.
Funny enough, all the issues you're seeing with Smart Build seem like features from what the devs have talked about. Smart Building is purposefully worse than normal building because you're supposed to leave the training wheels behind (like autocombos in fighting games), and just have it as a convenient option for late-game busywork (like building supply), when the differences no longer matter.
Love your approach to examining every minute detail to from every angle, though.
Edit: the Therium exploration section is fucking amazing, thank you. Shit ain't that deep, tho. I do like it as an opportunity cost to tech rushing on 1 or 2 bases, it's a good reason to engaging with Tier 1 units (besides staying alive).
^this!
Even if this is the case, it's really stupid that the training wheels are training you to do something completely different than the "intended way of playing the game". There are other ways to add accessibility options, and trying to hamstring people who use the global hotkeys is just kind of stupid given how much time investment is required to learn them.
If you know anything about learning something through repetition, It can be difficult to unlearn a bad habit. In this case, they've deliberately designed the game to have a bunch of "bad habits" which are suboptimal that you have to unlearn after you take off the training wheels. In other words, if you want to be competitive in this game you are almost expected to have previous experience playing another strategy game so that you will avoid the training wheels entirely. That makes zero sense...
The training wheels are wobbly
IMO this is a really bad way of doing it. Making the system beginners use and the system pros use completely different means you have to completely relearn the game if you want to improve at it. Why would you make a slightly easier, slightly worse way of playing that players will have to completely unlearn if they want to improve at the game? Not to mention playing that way actively makes your play worse without you noticing; ie, idling workers, grabbing the wrong worker, making you unable to power build. If someone learns to play using only the quick build stuff, they might never learn they can power build or quickly defend by grabbing a worker from a specific location.
@@draakisback The "the time required to learn the control scheme" has been 5-10 minutes, judging by the RTS-newbie friends I played with. It's as simple as Q to build a building, and then W/E to build units. It's a learning tool if you're new to RTS, so you keep doing what you're already doing otherwise.
If you ever want to optimize your build timings, you can learn the traditional way of selecting the workers, but by then you'll have learned other, more important RTS things, and the training wheels did their job. And the other 4 macro keys are still useful, they're the same as hotkeying your buildings in SC2.
The fact that chat isn't visible at all makes some parts of this video hilarious!
I kind of hate how the more attack "speed" you have, the slower you attack. Don't get me wrong, I like that there's a number that shows how many seconds it takes between attacks, but it should definitely be called attack "cooldown" or similar
Attacks per second would be a better name
@@gustavofazion2971 Really, they just need to add units, whatever they are. Attacks/second or seconds/attack, doesn't matter.
Attack "rate" is ambiguous, but generic and suitable and not misleading, and since it's such a short name I would prefer it for simple UI layout reasons
@@gustavofazion2971but its not attacks per second. I wish it was.
I love that just by reading the stats on the units you figured out so quickly that vanguard mirrors must just end up as dog meta every game 😂 cuz they do
You gained my like, when you gave your finger!
the "easy" controls and the qwertz system also drives me up the wall
well, coming from sc2 - that system feels way more natural and intuitive than this "smart" system
What do you mean by "that system"? SG has the SC2 system + the quick menu. So it's not a case of which system is better, because you can already select and hotkey anything in SG.
The quick build system is good for fast building stuff rapidly when you don't care which worker does it as they return to collection automatically afterwards. Like quick supply structures or turrets.
@@Leonhart_93 well, sure you can choose whichever system you like in sc2 and make your own. in sc2 it just feels like you have way more control and precision. stormgate is so wishy-washy simplistic yet infuriating. it lacks focus and a clear vision what it even wants to be. a hybrid of sc2, wc3 and some others, yet is nothing all at the same time. don't know how else to describe it really
@@LounoirRecords How does it feel like you have way more control and precision in SC2 if SG has EXACTLY the same system of hotkeying multiple structure and camera hotkeys? The quick build system is completely extra on top of all of that.
And also getting upgrades from the quick build without hunting for upgrade structures in your base is genius.
Besides, factions like Celestials have exclusively advantages from the build system, no downsides. They build things like in the C&C games.
1:41:00 such good communication. i enjoy the enriched node bug -- it's a cool upkeep mechanic imo (having zero idea of how the resource is used)
Good analysis. I don't particularly have an opinion about the quick build system, but it's useful for upgrades without hunting for the structures. And the nuisance only applies to Vanguard, it's not an issue for the others. What I like most is the upgrades system, it's well thought out without copying Starcraft.
Smart build should take from selected workers first if you have any selected. That way you can choose an individual worker or a group of workers to do the task if you want to control that and you can use Q across the board instead of a mix of Q and Z.
Supposedly the global hotkeys being bad and vague is a feature of this game and this makes zero sense to me. When you practice something through repetition, it can be very difficult to unlearn bad habits. They designed this game with a bunch of "training wheels" which are effectively a worse control scheme, any new player who uses these controls is going to have to unlearn them if they want to get to the highest level of play. In other words they've added some arbitrary difficulty to the game which will lock people out from being able to play it properly unless they have previous experience with a game like starcraft 2 or Warcraft 3. That's terrible design.
For a game that supposedly is trying to be as new player friendly as possible while still keeping a high skill ceiling, this system is just completely antithetical of what they claim they want this game to be. They are basically penalizing the new players by giving them a worse control system and I can't figure out the reason why anybody would design a game like this. There are other ways to do accessibility, it makes no sense to design two separate control systems and have one of them be objectively worse.
I HAVENT SEEN DAY9 in FOREVER.... ahh the good ol days
Solution to the quickbuild issue is to prefix all build hotkeys when selecting a worker, with S for stop. By stopping, it will then be nearest worker (probably).
I'm in a similar boat Day9. It feels like I need to spend hours learning everything all over again just to understand the game. I never understood the "barriers of entry" of RTS games until Stormgate. I don't have the time to study for Stormgate before I get to play it anymore.
*new game comes out*
ahh damn that means i have to learn the new game!!
@@JustinK0I see your point, but at the same time it's not unreasonable for legacy players, who are already familiar with established genre conventions, to want new games to be somewhat close to their comfort zone. Demanding players relearn stuff normalized by comparable games is a dicey business- too many boutique mechanics will alienate the player, who often has limited time and patience.
@@CF565 I don't feel like Stormgate requires you to learn anything that new though? It plays like a mix of Starcraft and Warcraft in one game feels very natural to me
@@RancorSnp There are a ton of effects like "Infest" mentioned in tool tips but they don't actually explain what they do at all lol. The little Fiends that spawn are so tiny I didn't even notice I was making them at first to put two and two together.
I don't see what you have to relearn? The smart build system takes a few minutes to understand, and if it feels bad to you you can just use normal hotkeys instead. Everything else is pretty standard for RTS games (a lot of things are so close to SC/WC that it can feel like a knock off lol)
ive never laughed so hard for an hour, totally best video ever
Those are some reallybfair points from d9. Edit. Lol this video is just halarious, looking forward for more sg insight/rant videos😂
I think if a moving worker is both pathing to a position closer to the queued smart command than any idle worker, and is closer than any idle worker, that moving worker should be interpreted as an idle worker for the smart command.
The whole problem with thereum is that they copy/pasted the resource mechanics from Tempest Rising without adding any real gameplay or lore purpose, they only wanted to have an innovative resource mechanic. In that game the resource is some kind of radioactive plants. It makes sense that it keeps spreading because it's growing. It makes sence that it gets "enriched" because it is a freaking forwer, that can bloom. In Stormgate - thats just some rocks. I'm also pretty sure that the node getting "enriched" and it only spawning enriched nuggets is a bug.
For the quick build or quick train, maybe it would be good to show the buildings selected in the central screen and when you train the units you see the build queue pop up like normal. Like a visual confirmation that your build has occurred. Rather than just leaving that screen black with no information
Thank you for making this video. I just started playing Stormgate yesterday, and I was very confused by the automatic stuff and the Buddy Bot thing, etc.
I totally agree on the "intention" point. The perfect strategy game would be me having an intention and the game executing it perfectly. That intention might be stupid, but at least I wouldn't be held back by not being able to click things fast enough. This is not it. And even if it was it for me, someone else would have different expectations. So it would need to be customizable in some way.
They just need to make ADVANCED hotkeys . Where you can choose your own key for each unit. So when you will use them you will no longer have these QWERT buttons and also you will have your own keys which is much better for high lvl players.
this Therium resource is the greatest case of overengineering I have ever seen.
the vespene geyser didn't need 3 layers of stuff and useless visuals stacked on it.
I'd love to have a conversation with the designer responsible for this.
AI War 2 uses a similar interface for building things, except with a lot of differences.
For example, when you queue up a structure, it just automatically starts building-- you don't need a worker to help. Workers will actually automatically move to help build it. This is kind of okay, because workers don't harvest resources-- they exist solely to assist with building things. You can override this manually if you want.
You can't just jam the interface into a game that works a lot like starcraft and expect it to just automatically work. You need to adapt the other systems surrounding it.
(opinion of someone who has watched like 10 minutes so far)
oh also
I think production of stuff on a planet in AI War 2 literally cannot be done by selecting the unit that builds it, you just have to do it from the Build Interface. So, that helps to prevent some conflicts in inputs. It's still a separate system you have to learn, but, it doesn't have this noise from other conflicting mechanics making it harder to learn.
wonder if storm gate will be big. would love to see sean be noticed by a larger audience. been watching since like 2013 or so, he’s the best!
3:01:01 "It's an Overlord with a smoking problem" lmao
There is a gameplay complexity benefit to enrichment, though I think it's unnecessary and overly complicated. If you wait long enough for nuggets to start becoming enriched, you are actually falling behind on the total amount you could have mined by that point. Enriched nuggeta are mined faster, but they do not contain more total resources, which means the exact same amount is on the map, but you hit the maximum number of nuggets already. This means you are "catching up," but you are definitively behind and your opponent, if he does not have any enriched nuggets, has mined strictly more resources than you have, which means he has a strict advantage over you.
I don't think the enrichment system is necessary, I think it's overly complicated and this benefit is rather minor and unnecessary, but it at least exists.
On the quick ai stuff, I actually like this design I think. It lets weaker players enjoy a 'higher level' game, as long as they don't face 'higher level' disruption, if that makes sense. Their actions end up doing more per move, as long as the opponent doesn't intentionally mess with those systems. *but they can be messed with*, making space for more interesting harassment?
love the 'dont forget the rope' that was a hilarious stream.
Easy fix on the selected and single build with shift and control as the switches between power and split build and just have selected override any smart function on the Q menu
HAHAHA "what do you think my job is?" hahahahaha
The main issue with the "Smart" system is it feels like you're learning a fundamentally different style of play divorced from the traditional method, and the rhythm of how you build with it doesn't flow neatly into learning the game "proper", which is a massive issue for a system supposedly designed around easing new RTS players into the genre. It's like Stylish mode in Guilty Gear or BlazBlue. Sure, it lets you jump right into the game, but it isn't really *teaching* you anything about the game or how it's supposed to be played, and in many ways accidentally cripples your learning process.
The Brutes would make sense, if the white health was the amount of hp the brute had remaining divided by 2 or something.
That way, its a choice, you either get 2 buffed fiends, or just the 2 normal fiends.
the catch back up mechanic of the enriched gas is weird because you dont have to be behind to obtain it from other nodes. expanding after a point will just be boost for either player.
Super interesting. I felt I was struggling with the controls and many times had to try to guess what would happen instead of the game doing just what I wanted it to. Hard to put in words what the problem was but Day9 is explaining some of it really nicely.
RTS attack speed is the cool down between attacks.
In MOBA it's how many attacks you do per second.
I agree on your idea on battle aces but what do you think of Gates of Pyre?
RTS Professor Day9 in full effect. We are so back!
1:23:55 Day9 going full soothing voice mode.
*Day9 uses 'GiantGrant voice'*
*it's super effective!*
If the reason for enrichment is so they don't end up with excessively large fields of Therium (not sure I can think of another reason for it), couldn't they just make it so the nuggets spawn at half the rate, have twice the total value, and can be mined by 2 workers? Each nugget could also spawn in two stages to keep the same frequency of the value spawning (so would be a bit closer to Tiberium in C&C). So then you just have one type of Therium, and you get the enrichment benefit from just stockpiling.
That worker auto assigning to build a close building also happens in the rts game Northguard 🤯
Day9 roasting FrostGiant for 'white health' was hilarious!
It would make a LOT of sense that, if you already had workers or structures selected and then pressed the quick-build menu, the menu would preferentially use the workers/structures you had just selected.
I'm at 12 something minutes into the video... regarding the movement and quick build, I think the feedback should be counting moving workers as if they were idle in their destination when the quick build menu is trying to figure out what to use, that would make it so you can send a worker before building, and then using quick build the worker you sent there will be the one selected, this might make 90% of the not intuitive part be removed from the game, just gotta find what range from the build to the destination command will be considered, limiting the range of it would avoid sending something to the other side of the map to build in the future and it returning because was the only "idle" worker
I think someting like first check any moving workers with destination within 20 units of build, no match? then any idle workers within 20 units radius, no match again? then pull the closest resource worker within 20 units, then no match again would look for any idle workers and after that any resource workers, that I think would fix most of the unintuitive issue of this mechanic (20 units is just a random reasonable number I came up with no testing, might be more, might be less)
This and also prioritizing selected units seems like it would solve everything
I believe the gameplay and mechanics are there, maybe just like visual wise a better bump in detail or more polish can help this keep growing. Hope the devs keep working at it in the upcoming year to come while in early access. Glad you enjoyed playing this Day9!
1:51:30 To spread out building commands, isn't that cloning (shift deselecting and then ordering the command to n-1 units)?
I wonder if they made thorium mines work that way to make them be like pseudo trees, like the way trees work in Warcraft III
I think you're wrong on base attack time.
Dota 2's engine very closely resembles warcraft 3, in which you can describe attack speed using two values: attack cooldown and attack speed bonus. attack cooldown is exactly like here - number of seconds between attacks. In dota 2 this is called base attack time.
Attack speed bonus then provides a percentage bonus to reduce this. 100% attack speed bonus = attack twice as fast = 1.0 BAT goes down to 0.5 sec for actual attack cooldown.
Barrell Farms XDXD
I'm literally crying. 2:34:57
After watching how construction works in this game I can say without hesitation that I am not thrilled about it. I'm glad early access is going to last a year because there's been so much that needs reworking.
"Not enough Luminite" goes brrrr
The easy build function issuing the order to a worker from another base tells me the developers have never relied on emergency levers in Dwarf Fortress
He tried to snap his own neck at least twice.
Great stream.
I fell off watching you when you kind of became a goofy Cali e-celeb, but this here was pure, prime-time gaming. So much respect for actually testing and trying to understand the mechanics.
Nice job dude.
If you are ever designing a game and you end up with such a convoluted system for a foundational element of the game as is here with the nugs, you should take a step back and think hard about wtf you are even doing.
2:56 - "jebaited?" are you in the FGC too beyond the RTS stuff?
My biggest control issue with Vanguard was having 4 guys selected, telling them to build 4 habitats, and then they all work on the same one.
I would rather that the smart build button actually select the worker and pre-presss the build button so I could see which unit would follow the command
Please clip and post the MS paint sponsored 15 minute “How to cook Therium Nuggets using your Therium Mine” so I can stream it to others instead of figuring it for myself. 😂
Receive new information about the ressource 55:30
Tries to understand for 27mn and 12sec
1:23:32 reads the information he requires to answer his question, take 10s to process, 1:23:42 finally understand the mechanic of the ressource.
Disclaimer, this is not to mock day9 in anyway, i just have empathy and compassion because sometimes you can be "blocked" or "limited" with your own logic when you try to understand a new thing. He was obviously having certain logic\experience\scheme\pattern\basis regarding how the ressources should work with the experience he has with others RTS, seeing him finally understand it gives me the giggle :3
Edit#: He understand less than what people understood about it, and the moment he understood, it felt like he understood more than what people knew because they didn't agree.
Because his take on having the Node being enriched is not shown in the game and could actually be, for clarity purposes, better if there could be an animation to show that indeed the node now is enriched and is producing enriched nuggets.
The bunker is very c&c generals which had the same system
Holy crap thank you, you explained perfectly my issue with the easy build system! As a game designer myself, I find that if you want to make a better system to make a more complex system more accessible, it needs to be easily communicated, faster to learn and use and so, to reduce clicks.
So you're right, it's not bad, but it could do with a lot of small QOL updates to make it more intuitive and reach the goal that the UI/UX designers wanted to reach, which is to make the interface easier to use and more accessible for new players. Like, say, a better system for selecting workers from a set of available workers (a better automated triage system), a global build queue with a minimap ping that shows up when hovering over the specific unit or building in the build queue (and being able to select the building or unit on first click, then on second click, having the camera center over the building) as well as a "cancel" button on each unit or building in global build queue. Maybe you can even have it so it only shows 5-6 individual builders/buildings on the build queue that you can personally customize, not unlike the control groups. Things like that. And this is just me thinking on the fly, not even necessarily good design ideas.
This is why I prefer complete games at this point 😂
Just play infernal and you'll never have to worry about re-rallying workers to mining lol